


Devour

by patrokla



Series: Black Boy Lane [1]
Category: The Libertines
Genre: Christmas, Codependency, Early Days, M/M, Prostitution, Suicidal Thoughts, Unreliable Narrator, a lot of confused and painful muddling about by two fools, this went rapidly downhill didn't it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2016-01-08
Packaged: 2018-05-09 11:48:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5538737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patrokla/pseuds/patrokla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Christmas in London isn't how Pete imagined it would be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. December 23rd

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last night I had a brilliant idea. I thought to myself, I'll write a Christmas fic about the libs. It'll be short, a bit fluffy, something sweet. I'll finish it tonight and post it on Christmas! 15 hours later, I was a few thousand words in and realizing that it would have three parts. 24 hours later, this monstrosity exists. I did finish the first part by Christmas, at least.
> 
> This was partially inspired by the 2002 interview where Pete said about his job as a rent boy, “It wasn’t a very happy time. I didn’t really enjoy it." That quote's been knocking around in my head since I read it this summer, and I knew it would lead to something - this, apparently. Banny saying that it wouldn't surprise her if Pete had been a rent boy because he and Carl were so completely broke played a role as well. It was also inspired by my own experiences with extreme and horrible poverty, although unlike Pete I never turned tricks to pay the power bill when the electricity got shut off.
> 
> But in all seriousness, this is a story about two young, incredibly poor people, one of whom has serious depression and suicidal tendencies, and the other a desire to live out life like Rimbaud wrote about it. I suspect that there's a lot of nonsense in here, and if I was the sort of person who waited around and edited things more carefully this would all be a lot shorter than it is. Instead, I give you this.
> 
> Warnings: prostitution, somewhat dubious consent, mentions of suicidal tendencies, tense changes, and probably a lot of Americanisms.

December 23rd  
  
When Pete first dreamed of Christmas in London, he thought of snow. Pure white snow blanketing the streets. Warmth, whimsical browsing for gifts (Pete’s a firm believer in finding every gift in an antique shop), and friends. And Carl, of course, if Pete could convince him to stay in the city and not head to Basingstoke.  
  
Suffice it to say, the reality is very different from his idealistic imaginings. Well, not suffice it to say, really. Sufficeness is only appropriate when you don’t plan on sharing the details, and Pete has to tell them to someone - even if it’s just his own mind.  
  
First, the snow. It’s barely snowed, mostly rained, but the two times it did the streets were just covered in dirty slush that melted within hours. It was even colder than the rainwater Pete usually had to make his way through in the mornings, and not a nice thing to have sloshing around in his holey boots.  
  
Second, warmth. Pete’s not sure he’s been warm at any point in the last month. His and Carl’s flat hasn’t had power for the last three weeks because they didn’t (couldn't) pay the bill, and it’s got practically no insulation. He wears all his clothes at night and piles on the blankets that Carl’s found somewhere, but it’s never enough. The holes in his boots, shirts, and jeans have been taped and sewed to within an inch of their life, but the cold and damp always seems to find a way in.  
  
Third, gifts. Specifically, buying them. More specifically, having money with which to buy them. This is something that Pete doesn’t possess at the moment, and likely won’t in the future. If he did, he wouldn’t spend it on gifts. He’d buy himself boots with no holes and a thick coat. God, a coat…  
  
Fourth, friends. He does have those, although not the type he always imagined. They’ve all scattered with the onset of the winter, though, all except Steve. Steve is a lot like the boys he went to school with, a little spacey and not entirely talented, but decent enough and willing to invite Pete in for a cuppa a few times a week. That puts him high up in Pete’s book. Carl is…not really a friend, not really _anything_ that Pete can think of. He’s just. There. Because he can’t not be, they’ve got to have each other and their songs or they’ll have nothing. Carl is like air. Pete doesn’t consider him a friend, but a vital necessity.  
  
Finally, convincing Carl to stay in London and not visit his family. This is, in fact, something Pete has entirely changed his mind on. In fact he has spent the last two weeks trying to convince Carl to see his relatives during the holidays, and take Pete with him. God knows they haven’t got anything to celebrate with here.  
  
Carl won’t, though, hates phoning or visiting because he hears disappointment in every word they say, whether it’s there or not. He’s been in one of his moods lately, the storm cloud ones that result in lethargy with brief occasions of violence, usually perpetrated on Pete. He lost a job at the offy round the corner because he didn’t get out of bed for two days straight, and to top that off he’s starting to get a nasty cough from sitting in a frigid, mildewing room for hours on end. He needs medicine. He needs some better blankets, and actual hot food. He needs a hundred things Pete can’t get for him, and a few that Pete actually can.  
  
Or could, if he had any money at all. He’d been fired from the theatre weeks ago, and the money he’d been taking from the till had run out shortly after that. Since then, he’s been living off of whatever Steve offers him, whatever he can steal, and the whiskey that Carl used to bring back from work. The whiskey made the rest of it bearable, but without that Pete finds himself on the brink of the hopelessness that Carl is currently neck-deep in.  
  
—  
  
He’d woken up this morning, two days before Christmas, and could see his own breath curling in the air, the most lively thing in the flat by far. Carl had been curled in the corner looking blank and lifeless. There was black mold creeping out of the bathroom and into the rest of the flat.  
  
Things couldn’t go on like this. Carl was in a state, the flat was a tip, and Pete hadn’t eaten a full meal in days. Pete had looked around, and an old saying of his dad’s had popped into his head: when times are hard, duty calls.  
  
“Duty calls,” he’d murmured to himself into the frigid air. Carl didn’t take any notice of it, only stirring when Pete began pulling on his boots.  
  
“Goin’ out,” he’d said, barely a hint of a question in his voice.  
  
“Just for a bit,” Pete had told him. “Popping out for the necessities, yeah?  
  
Carl had just hummed, and lapsed back into staring blankly at the door, like he was already waiting for Pete to return.  
  
Pete had pulled a hat over his hair, which was no doubt a mess. That probably wouldn’t matter, he’d thought. Then he’d walked to the nearest payphone and reluctantly pushed the last of his money through the slot, dialing a number he’d memorized long ago, but hoped to never call again.  
  
“Who is this?”  
  
Pete had to close his eyes for a brief moment before responding. That harsh voice was all too familiar. God, he was doing this again…  
  
“It’s Pete. Peter. Doherty,” he’d said, hoping he’d been recognized, but also dreading it.  
  
“Ah, Pete! Had a feeling you’d be calling ‘bout now, this is the time of year when a man needs easy money.”  
  
“Yeah, easy money,” Pete had repeated numbly.  
  
“Well, you’re in luck. I’ve just had a boy walk out, without paying debts or nothin’, very rude of him. So head to the usual spot, Gerard’s still there to keep an eye on things. Oh, and Pete? Try and cheat me out of my cut again and I’ll make sure you won’t have a chance to come crawling back to me next time things are hard. You hear me?”  
  
“Yeah, I- it won’t happen again, I swear.”  
  
“It better not. Now run along, you’ve got plenty of work to do.”  
  
—  
  
That had been two hours ago. Two hours of standing in the cold trying to look appealing, and not half-starved and desperate. Gerard had taken most of his layers when he’d shown up, saying they’d detract from the whole package. Pete couldn’t exactly argue with him, Gerard was a few inches shorter but about one hundred pounds of muscle bigger, and Pete had seen what happened to the people who got on the wrong side of him.  
  
So there Pete stands, shifting from foot to foot to keep from going numb, and waiting. Waiting for someone - almost certainly some man - to think he was worth buying.  
  
If hell exists, it’s probably this, he thinks. Just endless waiting and dreading, with no way out of the cold until the worst happens. Although it could be worse. I could be Carl. Fuck, I hope he’s going to be alright. He always pulls through these times, but just barely. I don’t know what I’ll do if he tries to jump off a bridge with me again. Maybe go gladly. At least it’d end all this waiting…  
  
“Pete!” Gerard hisses, jolting Pete from his reverie. There's someone walking down the street, and there was only one reason anyone would walk down it.  
  
Pete bites his lips, trying to make them look less pale, more appealing. He crosses his arms, folds his shoulders in to show off his collarbones. Tries to look smaller, less gangling and awkward.  
  
It works. The man heads straight for him, looking shifty and a little nervous.  
  
“How much?” he asks, as soon as he nears Pete.  
  
“Usual rates,” Pete says, throat feeling dry. “Five for a handy, tenner for my mouth.”  
  
The man’s eyes flick to Pete’s bitten-red lips, and he looks around nervously before handing over a tenner. Pete pockets it, feeling Gerard’s eyes on him.  
  
“Alright, come with me.”  
  
He leads the man around the corner, where the street turns into a dead end. It’s more of an alley with an overhang that keeps out the worst of the chill. Private, but close enough that Gerard can hear him if anything went south.  
  
Pete has nightmares about this alley, sometimes.  
  
He takes a half second to summon up every bit of doe-eyed, hip-swaying allure that he still has and moves towards the man, backing him up against the brick wall of the alley.  
  
“Relax,” he murmurs when the man’s eyes begin to dart around nervously. “No one comes back here except us. You’re fine. And I’m gonna make you more than fine in a minute.”  
  
And then he folds to his knees, feeling the chill of the ground through the holes he hasn’t managed to patch in his jeans. But that doesn't matter. What matters is popping open the button on the man’s trousers, pulling down the zip. Leaning forward and looking up through his eyelashes, and then.  
  
And then getting to work. It’s easy to slip back into the old head space, doing his usual moves and seeing which work best, which will end this soonest. Lick, suck, breathe in through his nose, ignore the taste and smell, back and forth. And rinse and repeat, until the man stiffens and shudders, spills hot and bitter into his mouth.  
  
And so that’s what he does. And that’s what happens. And afterwards, when the man has pulled up his trousers and walked away a little looser, less nervous, Pete thinks about just staying there and never moving again.  
  
But he has food to buy, and medicine, and - and there's Carl. There’s always Carl.  
  
So he pushes himself up and walks back to the street corner, where Gerard gives him a raised eyebrow and a thumbs up. And he goes back to waiting, and dreading.  
  
—  
  
Carl hasn’t fallen this deep into the bottomless pit that seems to make up the core of him in weeks. He drifts in and out of awareness, swept along on the waves of absolute despair. He’s freezing, he’s starving, but these pale in comparison to the rest of it. He feels like he can’t breathe, can’t sleep, can’t keep existing like this. Cold and alone, in a dark unheated flat in the dead of winter.  
  
And then Pete will come home. The rush of cold air as the window opens feels warm when Pete comes through, and the blackness recedes from Carl’s mind for a moment. He’ll watch as Pete bustles around, somehow looking busy in a flat with two pieces of furniture and less food. Pete brings light, literally, coaxing the propane hot plate into heating water for tea, even though they haven’t bought any gas for it in ages. The flickering flame reminds Carl of the candles Pete once lit all over the flat, hoping they’d warm things up. And they had, until one was accidentally kicked and nearly set the thin carpet on fire.  
  
Sometimes Pete will go to wherever Carl is sitting, on the mattress, or the moth-eaten sofa, or the floor. He’ll sit by him, so close that their shoulders and legs touch, and Pete’s wayward and unwashed hair threatens to flop into Carl’s eyes.  
  
Pete will talk about his day, about the people he saw on the streets, or the cat that came up to him in a park, or how he’d “found something that might work out, I really think so this time.” Disconnected stories all woven together with the hints of Arcadia that Pete can’t help but add. How the sun had shone in a particular way and he’d felt like it was a doorway to another world, that if he could make it to that spot quick enough he’d be transported to somewhere else, somewhere better.  
  
Carl doesn’t usually say anything as Pete chatters and babbles, needing to fill the silence. He’ll hum or nod, mumble a few syllables if pressed, but usually he’s too exhausted by his own mind to do even that.  
  
Pete himself is exhausting, but in a different way. Pete has dreams, ones so vivid and beautiful that Carl can’t help but get swept up in them. Pete talks about the future, about how they’ll be famous musicians, performing at Glastonbury and Reading and Leeds, taking America by storm in one sold-out tour after another.  
  
“We’re gonna bring real music back,” Pete whispers fervently into the dark and Carl, Carl believes him.  
  
When Pete finally lapses into silence, usually because he’s fallen asleep on Carl’s shoulder, Carl comes back to reality. There’s always exhaustion, but this kind feels like it comes from good work, the kind that promises results. He’ll let himself hope, for the briefest moment, that Pete’s right and not a naive boy slowly killing himself. That he, Carl, could actually do something great.  
  
It’s difficult, this hope business. Carl tries for Pete’s sake, and for his own. For all the times that he’s begged Pete to die with him, he’s not too keen on really and truly being gone. Not now, anyway.  
  
Carl’s jolted from his thoughts at the sound of footsteps outside their door. For a brief second he thinks it’s Pete, returning at last, but the footsteps pause for only a second before they carry on in their journey to somewhere better. It wouldn’t have been Pete, he thinks, ‘cause Pete knows the door doesn’t work.  
  
Or maybe it was. Maybe Pete had neared the flat and glimpsed Carl sitting exactly where he’d been when Pete left, and just thought ‘fuck it!’ Maybe Pete’s finally given up on all this. Given up on Carl.  
  
Carl wishes he could want that. Could want something better for Pete than this misery. But he’s selfish, always has been, and Pete’s all he has when times are rough like this. Without Pete, he’d wither away inside the flat, unnoticed until the smell bothered one of the neighbours. Carl doesn’t want to go like that. Even if it’s all he deserves.  
  
—  
  
Pete's made nearly forty quid when Gerard says he's done standing out in the cold, and Pete can either warm him up or pack up and get out. Pete tells him to fuck off before he can stop himself, and ten minutes later he finds himself back in his two jumpers and coat with twenty-five pounds in his pocket. It should’ve been closer to thirty, but Gerard hadn’t taken Pete’s suggestion very happily, and Pete hadn’t want to push it.  
  
Twenty-five is - well, it’s better than zero. Enough for bread, fags, fuck-awful whiskey, tins of soup, and something that might help with Carl’s cough. And a bit left over that could go towards rent, which they’re at least a week behind on, or into the leccy meter.  
  
They’d paid it last month by pawning the guitar. It was a battered old acoustic with other people’s names carved along the sides, but it was theirs, and the flat feels a lot emptier without it there. And now they can't try and busk, not that they’d been getting much from it.  
  
The silver lining is that the upstairs neighbours don't have an excuse to throw bricks through the window any more, but that's cold comfort.  
  
I could keep at this, he thinks, walking along the street and swinging the plastic shopping bags in his hands. We could get the power turned back on, get a new guitar, some more blankets. Maybe even _two_ guitars…  
  
He gets caught up in the fantasy, thinking about a future where he coaxes Carl into writing songs more often, and they go to bed warm. Maybe Carl doesn’t insist on sleeping top-to-tail, but lets Pete wrap his arms around him instead. They’d be so much warmer if they slept like that, but Pete hasn’t managed to convince Carl of it yet.  
  
Carl. Pete’s parents don’t understand why both of their children had taken such a shine to a sullen mumbly boy who was in school to be an _actor_ of all things. Pete has never been able to explain it satisfactorily to them, especially when he’d called and told his dad he was dropping out of school and moving in with Carl. It had been a short, explosive argument, the no-holds-barred type that left both of them so angry and hurt that neither had tried to call the other since.  
  
Carl had been angry at him too, for some reason. Pete guesses that he's uncomfortable with people doing things for him, and because of him. Big things, like moving in. Like estranging himself from his parents.  
  
Fundamentally, he doesn't think Carl understands why Pete has made the choices that led them to where they are now, broke and desperate, but _together_. He doesn't like hearing Pete tell Carl that he loves him, even when they're both off their heads. So Pete writes songs and poems for him instead, buys him fags late at night just because he wanted them, goes on walks with him and holds him back from the edge.  
  
Sometimes Pete thinks about how unappreciated all of these gestures are and he turns bitter, but a few good hours with Carl and the feeling is gone. He’s endlessly captivated by this strange, unlikely, unhappy, wary creature that he’d somehow managed to catch. Now to tame him…  
  
Shaking off thoughts of petting Carl’s hair like a cat - where had that even come from? - he turns onto the street their flat is on. It's the back alley, actually, since they have to use the window, but thankfully it’s decently lit. He’s never been mugged in it, so it's a far cry better than a fair few other places in the city.  
  
He drops the bags through the window first, hearing them thump on the floor as he hoists himself up and through. He sits on the sill for a second, legs dangling, letting his eyes adjust to the dark.  
  
The first thing he sees, really sees, is Carl sitting in the same place that Pete had left him, staring at him with wide eyes.  
  
“You alright, Carlos?” Pete asks as he drops to the floor.  
  
“You came back,” Carl says. “I didn’t think you’d come back.”  
  
“Course I came back,” Pete says, laughing a little at the strangeness of the statement. “And brought a few things home, too.”  
  
He tosses the fags to Carl, then goes about turning the camp stove on. It's a hot plate, really, and takes forever to warm anything up, but it doesn't need electricity and that’s what matters now.  
  
“How’s soup and tea sound?” he asks, taking out the tins of soup. Tomato, awful, but at least it’ll be warm. God, he hasn’t had a hot meal in…days, at least. Since the last time he’d gone over to Steve’s, before Steve left to visit his mum up north for the holidays.  
  
Carl mumbles something incomprehensible around the fag in his mouth, which Pete takes as assent.  
  
“Where’d you get the money?” Carl asks, breathing smoke into the air.  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“For food and everything. You didn’t steal it, did you?”  
  
“I fucking well didn’t!” Pete exclaims, offended at the suggestion. He's about to say what he’d done when he remembers what, exactly, that was. He hasn’t told Carl about it before, and isn't about to start now. He doesn't want to tell _anyone_ about it.  
  
“Had an opportunity come up,” he says instead, busying himself with the soup.  
  
“As long as you didn’t steal it,” Carl says. “If you get caught, I-“  
  
He stops himself and Pete looks over, curious.  
  
“You’ll what?”  
  
“I’ll be pretty annoyed, is what I’ll be,” Carl says. But Pete can hear the words he’d bitten back, and they warm his heart a bit, unsaid or not.  
  
“Yeah alright, Mister Barat,” he says, rolling his eyes at Carl. He takes the now-warm soup off the hot plate and puts the kettle on, thankful that the water has stayed on, even if it is ice cold and only comes out of the kitchen tap. Pete had joked about it being a ‘kitchen sink mystery’ a few days ago, and Carl had told him his jokes were awful.  
  
“Got you some medicine,” he says into the quiet, hoping Carl hasn't sunken back into a fugue state already. “Just some syrup from Lidl’s, thought it might help with your cough.”  
  
“Not that awful cherry flavoured stuff,” Carl groans, and Pete smiles.  
  
“‘Fraid so. Childhood memories?”  
  
“Yeah, my mum wouldn’t touch the stuff, but my dad thought it was a cure-all or something.”  
  
He shudders, already imagining the taste.  
  
“Better than nothing, though,” Pete offers, and Carl shrugs.  
  
“S’ppose so.”  
  
—  
  
“Carl,” Pete says hesitantly, a few hours later. The soup had been downed in record speed, and Carl had taken some of the cough syrup reluctantly. Now they're sitting side by side on the mattress, blankets piled on their legs.  
  
“Carl, why’d you think I wasn’t coming back?”  
  
He chances a look at Carl after he asks the question, trying to see something - what? - on his face.  
  
“Not exactly a lot to come back to, is there,” Carl says after a moment, gesturing at the squalor around them.  
  
“I’d come back for you, if nothing else,” Pete says quietly.  
  
Carl doesn’t respond to that, but he doesn't move away when Pete bumps his shoulder either.  
  
“I wouldn’t ever leave you,” Pete says after a moment, feeling brave with a meal and some whiskey in his stomach.  
  
Carl snorts at that.

“Yeah, alright,” he says dismissively.  
  
“I mean it,” Pete insists. ‘Carl, I-“  
  
He stops himself there, wanting to keep the peace.  
  
“I’d do anything for you,” he says softly after a moment.  
  
A sudden wave of loneliness strikes him after he says the words, as he looks around in the dim light at the nothingness around them. He feels very young, and very stupid. Carl doesn't say anything, and Pete bites his lip and wraps a loose thread from one of the blankets around his finger, winding and unwinding it, watching his skin turn pink and white.  
  
Something makes him look over at Carl, and his eyes go wide. Carl looks utterly miserable, looks devastated.  
  
“Carl, what’s wrong?”  
  
No reply, just a wholly uncharacteristic lip tremble.  
  
“Carl please, what is it?”  
  
“I don’t know why,” Carl says finally. “I don’t understand why you’re like this. Why you stay when _I’m_ like this.”  
  
Pete looks at him, wishes he could just lean over and kiss him, kiss the doubt out of his mind. Wished he could make Carl understand.  
  
Instead, he just moves closer, slouches down so he can put his head on Carl’s shoulder.  
  
“It doesn’t matter why,” he says after a moment. “All that matters is that I stay. I’ll always stay.”  
  
And Carl doesn't believe him, he knows, but he doesn't push Pete away from him either.  
  
These days, Pete will take what he can get.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of trivia/notes:
> 
> \- The flat is based on the Delaney Mansions, but that was actually a bedsit and by the time I remembered that I'd already written it as a proper, if a bit shit, flat. Their neighbours did, in fact, throw a brick through the window because they were playing guitar "very quietly" according to Carl.
> 
> \- The 'saying of his father's' that pops into Pete's head is taken from the same interview as the afore mentioned quote, although I don't know who he got it from.


	2. December 24th

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well this spiraled wildly out of control. 
> 
> Warnings for: disturbing dreams, thoughts of suicide, a sort of suicide attempt, incredibly (so, so incredibly, I really can't stress this enough) unhealthy codependent relationships, and unreliable narration by everyone involved.

December 24th

Pete doesn’t so much sleep that night as slip in and out of consciousness, lulled into a sense of security by whiskey and the warmth of Carl, who had fallen asleep curled up next to Pete before he could enact his ‘top-to-tail’ rule.   
  
There are a hundred, a thousand different things that Pete _could_ think about, but for much of the night he ponders the only question that seems to matter now: is it worth it to do it again?   
  
He could do it again. He did before, for weeks and weeks, during the summer. Carl had moved in with a girl, and then another, and Pete got by for a little while on busking and odd jobs, but eventually those wells ran dry. He’d been desperate then, although not as desperate as he is now, and, well. London has always been full of people willing to take advantage of the weak and vulnerable.  
  
Is he weak? He likes to think not, likes to think that everything he’s learned this year whilst living with Carl has toughened him. Maybe it has, maybe it doesn’t matter.  
  
What does matter is that he looks weak. It’s part of his appeal, he knows. The big dark eyes and unruly dark hair, face still young and rounded. The picture of innocence and vulnerability waiting to be debauched. Pete’s a regular gamine, and a gamin as well, and he knows that it’s worth something to some people. Or, it’s worth something to let them take it apart, control it. Him.   
  
He doesn’t want that. Yes, there’s a part of him that relishes the aesthetic of debasement, the poetry of being on one’s knees. But there’s another, larger part that never wants to lead a man to an alley and get on his knees again. Not when he knows he has to, or he won’t eat. Or Carl won’t eat. Or they’ll lose the flat and be turned out on the street.  
  
And that’s his decision made for him, really. He has no other choice. It’s worth it to do it again because _not_ doing it - not doing it could be ruinous. Pete holds Arcadia close to his chest, and he knows he needs Carl for it to be realized and explored to its true potential. He can’t lose Carl, not to a girl or drugs or his own dark mind, so Pete has no choice, really.  
  
He lets out a heavy breath, looks down at the slumbering figure pressed against his leg, and wonders if everything will be alright in the end.  
  
Then he gets up and heads to the usual spot.  
  
—  
  
Carl dreams of falling. Falling thousands of feet, wind nipping at his skin and hair flying everywhere. He knows he’ll hit the ground soon, but he doesn’t particularly mind. There’s nothing that can save him now, and it’s a freeing thought. There’s a calm that comes from accepting the inevitable.  
  
Except he doesn’t hit the ground. No, he tumbles through the air for hours and hours and hits - something. Something warm and familiar feeling, something that smells like smoke and salt and apples.  
  
Pete. He opens his eyes, afraid of what he might see. He’s on top of Pete, must’ve landed right on him. What are the chances?  
  
It’s not until he pushes himself off of Pete and to his feet that Carl realizes Pete is lying still on the ground, eyes closed.  
  
“Pete?”   
  
No response, and as Carl leans in he can’t see any rise or fall of breath. No movement at all, just an unnatural stillness.  
  
He must’ve crushed Pete, that’s the only explanation. Must’ve landed so hard that he broke every bone in Pete’s body and knocked the life right out of him.   
  
Carl crouches next to Pete’s body, reaches out trembling fingers and runs them through Pete’s bird’s-nest hair, over and over. He doesn’t know what to do, how to help. They’re in the middle of nowhere, and there’s no emergency services to be reached.  
  
Carl looks around at the blank landscape in despair, hoping against hope that there’ll be a bus, a hospital, a phone…anything that could save Pete. As he looks, the landscape begins to take form and color, twisting and darkening until he’s no longer surrounded by clear nothingness, but the familiar brown walls of their flat.   
  
He looks back down to where Pete’s body lay, but there’s nothing there but a pool of blood spreading out in all directions. He watches uncomprehendingly as it covers the floor and continues increasing, until he’s standing waist deep in blood. He’s covered in it now, hands stained and shoes completely filled. It keeps rising, inexorable, until it floods his mouth when he opens it to do something - scream? Call for Pete?  
  
But it’s too late, Pete is gone and Carl can’t see anything at all, is completely submerged in this fucking blood that never stops, just rises until his lungs are full of it and he sinks to the floor of the flat in despair, spasming and thrashing noiselessly until he’s too weak to move.   
  
He’s going to die in this pool of blood, alone and desperate, screaming without a chance to be heard, be saved. He’s going to die-  
  
Carl wakes with a start. He knows without looking that Pete is already gone, nothing but rumpled blankets left in his place. And that’s - that’s perfectly fine. Pete can go wherever he likes, whenever he likes. Carl isn’t his keeper.  
  
But he can’t bring himself to move his face from where it’s buried in his pillow, to confirm that he really is alone in the bed with his ghosts.  
  
His mouth tastes like blood.  
  
—  
  
The thing about men looking for a bit of rough trade is that they almost never want to pay extra to do anything. Pete’s not even sure he’d let them if they did ask, but if he’s going to be hit in the face by a balding man with a massive Star Wars tattoo he’d rather get paid for it, not be taken by surprise and left with a smarting cheek and nothing to show for it.  
  
Gerard just smirks when he reappears around the corner, clearly unconcerned by anything that doesn’t involve Pete’s immediate death or dismemberment. It’s nice to know he’s got such fantastic protection.  
  
He wants to say all of this out loud, but he also wants to be able to keep what he’s made today and not have Gerard take half because he doesn’t appreciate backtalk.  He’ll lose thirty percent as it is, that’s the arrangement, and Pete doesn’t like it but he has to admit that having someone who looks threatening right around the corner has probably saved his skin on more than a few occasions.   
  
It’s already getting dark, something that fills Pete with relief. He’s made his bed and he’ll lie in it, but it’ll be nice to go back to the flat, get the power back on, and just. Spend a few hours not being a commodity.   
  
He’s in a good mood when he heads back to the flat, stopping in the offy to buy milk, more fags, and more whiskey. He has nearly fifty pounds in his pocket, an absolute fortune compared to the lint that had been laying in it for the last few weeks, and last night with Carl had been so nice compared to most of their nights lately. He’s hopeful.  
  
The hope vanishes the instant he pushes himself clumsily over the windowsill.   
  
Carl is gone. Nowhere to be seen in their flat, which normally would be occasion to celebrate - a sign that the dark mood is finally receding - but he’s left signs that make Pete incredibly uneasy.   
  
First, Carl’s leather jacket is lying on the mattress. He would never go out without it, especially in cold like this.   
  
Second, the bottle of whiskey is still a quarter full, and Carl would never go out to drink when he has something in the flat.   
  
Third, and most telling, the window had been wide open when Pete arrived. Carl’s been gone for a while, and he left in a hurry.   
  
“Fucking hell, Carl,” Pete murmurs to himself, and heads right out the window again.   
  
—  
  
Carl doesn’t really remember leaving the flat. What he does remember is waking up from the nightmare, cold and alone, and realizing that it wasn’t some horrible fantastical creation of his mind. It was a warning, a sign - Pete would end up dead if Carl stayed around him.   
  
He knows, has known for quite some time, that Pete is in love with him. He tells himself that he humours Pete because he pities the boy, but deep down he knows the truth: he wants Pete to love him, wants to have someone around him who would do so much for so little promised in return.   
  
Carl’s head is well and truly fucked, but even he can tell that this is a bad thing to want. And now he has his proof in the form of the nightmare.   
  
He can’t stand staying in the flat, not when it’s full of signs of Pete’s adoration. The cough medicine, the food in the fridge, the empty soup tins from the night before. He can’t stand to wait for Pete to come home and see his face, his stupidly large eyes and hopeful smile. He can’t stand knowing that he’s taking advantage of Pete’s kindness, not when he’s finally fully admitted it to himself.   
  
So he finds himself walking along some street that looks wholly unfamiliar although it probably isn’t, mind blank except for one thing: Pete will die because of him, will die for him. And Carl can’t let that happen.  
  
So he walks.  
  
—  
  
Pete checks the two nearest pubs first, on the off chance that Carl had actually gone to one of them hoping to blag a few drinks. There’s no sign of Carl, and no one there has seen him in days, they say, so he heads back into the cold and tries to think of where to go next.   
  
It’s Christmas Eve, nearly everything is closed, so there’s not many places for him to go that are within walking distance. Somehow Pete knows that Carl’s not in a state to operate any type of transportation more complicated than his own legs.  
  
He doesn’t want to think it, but eventually he has to: Carl’s probably gone to try and kill himself.   
  
It doesn’t happen often. Really, it doesn’t. Carl has only seriously tried once, and that had been while he was drunk.  
  
Pete doesn’t think he’s drunk now, and that seems more worrying.   
  
Even as he’s thinking this his feet are moving, heading down the road to where he knows Carl will be.   
  
And indeed, there he is.  
  
—  
  
Regent’s Canal isn’t particularly deep. Carl knows this because he’d once gone under the bridge with Pete when they were both incredibly high and they’d fallen in.  It’s only a few feet deep where it crosses Camden Road, but Carl’s counting on the shallowness to do most of the work. The impact with the bottom is more likely to kill him than the water itself, and it's not the soundest plan he’s had, but he’s working with limited time here.   
  
He knows that sooner rather than later Pete will come looking for him, and Carl doesn’t want to be around when that happens.  
  
Carl hadn’t set out planning on this. It’s just that he’s realized it’s the only way to keep Pete safe. Even leaving won’t be enough, they always find a way back to each other, and Carl can’t risk that when the cost is so great.   
  
The moment he’d seen the bridge, he knew what he had to do and exactly how to do it.   
  
The only thing left to do now is jump.  
  
—  
  
The first thing Pete notices is how small Carl looks as he peers over the bridge at the canal. He’s wearing only a white wifebeater and his jeans; in any other situation it’d be a look Pete would appreciate.  
  
Now, it only highlights how little there is to Carl these days.   
  
“Oy, Carl!”  
  
Carl turns to look at him and Pete nearly falters at the sight of his eyes. They’ve never looked so blank before, reflecting everything around them and projecting nothing. It’s as if Carl isn’t really there at all, as if he’d sleep-walked his way here.   
  
“Please leave,” Carl says, and turns back to the canal.  
  
“I’m not leaving,” Pete tells him. “I told you I would stay, and I’d never lie about that.”  
  
“I know you wouldn’t. That’s why I have to do this, Pete.”  
  
“You don’t have to do anything,” Pete says softly. He reaches out a hand and places it on Carl’s shoulder. His skin is cold beneath Pete’s fingers, too cold.   
  
Carl turns at the touch, eyes darting to Pete’s hand before looking up at his face.   
  
“I do,” he says, “I do, because I’m killing you. I can’t kill you, Pete. I don’t want to.”  
  
“You’re not - you’re not killing me, look at me, I’m fine! Look, what’s this about?”  
  
“I had a dream,” Carl says slowly, turning back to look at the canal. “I had a dream that I killed you because you tried to save me - you _did_ save me, and I killed you. Shattered every bone in your body. And then I woke up and I knew.”  
  
“Knew what?”  
  
“I knew that it was the future. That you would be lost, to save me. And I’m not worth that, Pete.”  
  
Carl’s voice cracks on the last few words, and Pete’s chest feels tight. What to say to that? What can Pete do? Convince Carl that he’s worth Pete’s death a hundred times over? Carl will never believe that. He’ll probably just see it as proof that his dream was right.  
  
“It was just a dream,” he says instead, moving closer to Carl.  
  
“No, it wasn’t! You don’t understand, Pete. I’ve been using you.”  
  
“Using me?”  
  
“Yes,” Carl says, and turns to face him again. “I’ve been taking advantage of the way you feel about me, the way you’d do anything for me, because I-“  
  
He pauses, and then shudders in disgust.   
  
“I _liked_ it. I liked that you wanted me, even though there’s nothing to want. Even now, you’re out doing God knows what to make money because I’m too useless to. Taking care of me even though you shouldn’t. If I wasn’t so weak I would’ve left a long time ago, but I am, so I stayed. Stayed, and kept using you. I’m using you up, and if I stay eventually you’ll be gone completely.”  
  
Pete - doesn’t know what to say. He’d known he was transparent, of course. He’s never tried to hide how he felt from Carl, not really. But Carl wouldn’t have used that against him, would he? No, Pete thinks, no, never. But there’s a tiny part of him that says _maybe he did and you were too blind to see it_. He shakes it off; he can figure out the truth later, all that matters now is getting Carl home.  
  
“No,” he says, firmly, “Carl, you weren’t using me. I knew what I was doing and I did it because I wanted it to. I did it for both of us. Do you think I’m so selfless that I would sacrifice everything for nothing in return? I’m selfish, Carl, and weak as they come. I keep you with me, keep you coming back to me, no matter where you go. No matter how good it would be for you to not be with me. Because I couldn’t stand it if you weren’t, Carl. I couldn’t stand anything.”  
  
He doesn’t realise he’s crying until he feels the tears running off his face. Carl looks stricken.  
  
“So either we’re both taking advantage or neither of us are?” he asks, voice thick.   
  
“Exactly,” Pete says, taking a deep breath and wiping his eyes with his palms. “We’re different sides of the same coin, Carl. Everything in you is in me, and vice versa. Maybe different amounts, but there’s nothing you’ve done that I haven’t done, nothing you’ve felt that I haven’t felt. So trust me when I say I need you just as much as you need me, more, even.”  
  
He waits with bated breath as Carl stands there, thinking it over. Considering.   
  
“I don’t know if I believe you,” he says finally, “But, but I don’t want to die, Pete. I just don’t want to hurt you.”  
  
“You don’t, you won’t, you can't,” Pete says, feeling like a burden has been lifted from him because Carl doesn't want to die.   
  
Carl doesn’t want to die, and the future is an infinite expanse yet again, stretching out beyond the horizon for both of them. He wraps his arms around Carl’s freezing skin, reveling in the contact.   
  
“Come home?” he asks, pressing the words into Carl’s hair.   
  
For the longest moment Carl is still.  
  
Then his arms come up to wrap around Pete, and he nods.  
  
“Alright,” he mumbles into Pete’s jacket, and it’s the sweetest word Carl’s ever mumbled in his life.

“Let’s go home."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not much in the way of trivia/facts today, except that Regent Canal is indeed the closest canal to the Delaney Mansions, and as far as I can tell it's not very deep in most areas. Also, the gamine/gamin line is basically a terrible...play on words.
> 
> This chapter is one of the most exhausting things I've ever written.


	3. December 25th

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Well, at least you’re looking at me,” Pete chokes out, missing levity by a country mile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last part! I didn't think I'd finish it either, tbh. The two most relevant quotes for this are:
> 
> ❝ I fell in love with the idea that the mysterious thing you look for your whole life will eventually eat you alive. ❞  
> — Laurie Anderson 
> 
> ❝ It was my love that did us both to death. ❞  
> — Sylvia Plath, from Electra On Azalea Path 
> 
> Warnings: panic/anxiety attack, some internalized homophobia (three guesses as to whose), out of control codependency, and, I probably should’ve said this from the start, a portrayal of prostitution that may or may not have any accuracy and is based purely on conjecture and the quotes I’ve mentioned. The views expressed in this fic are probably not the author’s, etc.

December 25th  
  
It's a unique experience that he has no word for, the moment he realizes that he was wrong before when he thought things couldn’t possibly get worse. It’s that moment when it becomes clear that rock bottom is death, and there are endless depths to sink to before reaching that point.  
  
And it’s a law of the universe, or his universe, in any case, that anything which can get worse will get worse.  
  
—  
  
They don’t go to sleep after getting back to the flat, despite the exhaustion weighing down their steps. Pete makes tea and Carl feeds coins into the meter until the lights flicker back on.  
  
And so, when they’ve both retreated to the mattress and are pressed against each other, warm mugs in their hands and actual electric light highlighting how much more of the ceiling the mold claimed today, things seem - almost normal.  
  
Except, of course, for all the ways they aren’t. Pete’s throat aches from - work, and Carl’s jaw is set in anger about something. Or shame, or guilt, it’s hard to tell with Carl. Pete almost doesn’t want to ask, just wants to drift off next to him, secure in the knowledge that disaster has been staved off for one more day.  
  
Which is perhaps what might’ve happened, except Carl sees the bruise. Pete had forgotten about it, actually, forgotten about the man who hit him because when violence is happening on a much larger scale the little things tend to get forgotten. Pete can only mind about so many things, making one of them a bruise would be a foolish over-extension of his capabilities.  
  
Carl, however, doesn’t seem to have such limits, or maybe all of the anger that’s been absent from him in the last few days has just been bottled up, because he grabs Pete’s jaw, turning it to look at his cheek and scowling.  
  
“How’d you get this?”  
  
Pete shrugs, dislodging Carl’s hand.  
  
“Y’know how it is, lads and their insecurities. One of ‘em thought I looked a bit too pretty, and next thing I know, wham! Really I’m lucky it wasn’t worse.”  
  
It’s not a complete lie, the guy had said something about how he looked pretty like a girl (ha, Pete had thought, you haven’t seen Carl) and somehow turned that into a reason to hit him. And he _was_ lucky it wasn’t worse, considering how Gerard did fuck-all to stop it. Pete is beginning to remember why he’d started skimming a bit off the top.  
  
Carl doesn’t say anything, which means he probably doesn’t believe Pete but knows pursuing it any further will be futile. It’d taken a while for him to reach that point of compromise. Pete still refuses to, which is probably why so many of their arguments end in Carl trying to hit him or pulling a knife on him. Not that he’d ever use it, Pete knows that he never would, so it’s all in good fun.  
  
And Pete’s a bit of a masochist, and desperately in love to boot, so some small, twisted part of him likes wearing the marks that Carl sometimes leaves when their scuffles get out of hand. He suspects that Carl might like seeing them too, for his own masochistic reasons. Carl’s very fond of fuel that stokes his fire of self-loathing.    
  
This mark, though, this mark has been left by someone unknown to Carl, and known a little too well by Pete, and that’s more than enough reason for Carl to flare up in anger.  
  
“You need to be more careful,” he says, looking somewhere between thunderous and disapproving.  
  
“Yeah alright, lay off it,” Pete says.  
  
He’s not particularly in the mood for Carl to start acting superior just because he’s a bit older and better in a fight than Pete. Pete has other skills. He’s a poet, and much better than Carl at writing. He did much better in his exams, too, and for the brief few months that they’d both attended university he’d done better there too. It’s pretty likely that he’s better at sucking guys off in alleyways, but it’s hard to feel superior about that one…  
  
“Hey now,” Carl says, a touch more gently, “I’ve got to teach you to throw a decent punch, let you learn from an expert.”  
  
Pete snorts at that, but the tension has been broken, or at least lowered back to its usual levels, and he feels comfortable turning his head to bury it in Carl’s shoulder.  
  
“Carlos,” he says after a moment, “d’you think you would’ve jumped off the bridge if I hadn’t shown up?”  
  
Carl stays silent long enough that Pete thinks he won’t answer the question, but finally he hums thoughtfully.  
  
“I dunno, really. I suppose I knew you’d show up, you always do. I was ready to jump, but I knew I wouldn’t need to, if that makes sense.”  
  
“No, it doesn’t,” Pete mumbles into Carl’s shoulder, in what might be called a petulant tone.  
  
“Good,” Carl says seriously.  
  
They lapse into a comfortable, mutual silence, and Pete is very nearly asleep when Carl shifts away, and Pete lets his head thump onto the pillow.  
  
“Sorry, shoulder was falling asleep,” Carl says, and he actually sounds apologetic, which might be a first.  
  
“S’alright,” Pete says drowsily. He’s so tired probably anything would be alright at this stage as long as he can sleep.  
  
Anything except what Carl says next:  
  
“I know how you’re getting the money."  
  
Pete stills, wondering if he can pretend to be asleep. Or just play it cool, and tell Carl he’s wrong.  
  
“I saw you,” Carl says quietly. “Not now, but in the summer, when we weren’t -“  
  
“Saw me doing what, Carlos? I do all sorts of things, I’m a gifted child.”  
  
Carl laughs, a short bitter sound that verges on fury.  
  
“Yeah, the guy with his cock in your mouth really seemed like he was enjoying your gifts.”  
  
“Carl,” Pete says flatly, finally sitting up and looking at Carl, “I do the things I have to do. Leave it alone.”  
  
Carl’s staring at his hands, face inscrutable, and Pete really fucking wishes he’d fallen asleep before this conversation. He can’t even process and deal with the fact that Carl knows, even though it’s one of his nightmares. He used to try so, so hard to impress Carl, and he’s mostly over that now, but he wants to - to be someone Carl can be proud of to be with. Whatever 'with' might mean.  
  
“D’you know how I knew you were doing it again?” Carl asks.  
  
Pete doesn’t, and he doesn’t want to know.  
  
“I said drop it, Carl,” he says, but Carl continues on like he hadn’t said a word.  
  
“You get this look in your eyes. This blank look, like you’ve put a mask on over your face. But I can see past it, Pete, I know you're angry about it.”  
  
“I’m not fucking angry,” Pete snaps, and then he takes a deep breath, because he’s got to get this through Carl’s thick skull so they can never talk about it again.  
  
“I’m not angry,” he says, more softly, “I’m, God, Carl, I’m embarrassed, I’m ashamed, I’m afraid that you’ll find out and you won’t be able to look at me. Although I guess we can take that last one of the list now.”  
  
He notes, distantly, that Carl hasn’t actually looked at him through all this. There’s an awful feeling in the pit of his stomach, and he wonders if he’s going to throw up. Probably shouldn’t do it in bed, if he is.  
  
He doesn’t even notice that he’s not really breathing, is just gasping for breath like a fish out of water, until the feeling of Carl’s hands shaking him filter through.  
  
It feels like an eternity passes that way, the only solid things in the world being Carl’s hands, and everything else just swirls around Pete’s head, weightless, meaningless, useless.  
  
When he finally comes back to himself, he’s doubled over on the mattress, and Carl is kneeling in front of him looking worried.  
  
“Well, at least you’re looking at me now,” Pete chokes out, missing levity by a country mile.  
  
“Fuck’s sake, Pete,” Carl says, sighing and leaning forward to rest his forehead against Pete’s.  
  
“I can’t stop, you realize,” Pete says, feeling incredibly calm now that he can breathe again. Carl’s face is only millimetres from his, their noses are almost brushing, and it would be so easy to -  
  
“I told you,” Carl says, almost whispering the words, “I told you I was using you up. This is what I meant. All of this, it’s not healthy, Pete, you know it isn’t."  
  
Pete does know, just as he knows that Carl doesn’t mean selling himself, not really. He means them, their relationship, their - whatever it is, whatever they are to each other. He means that, and it terrifies Pete.  
  
“I know,” he says, “but Carl, it’s all I have. It’s all we have. I can’t act this desperately to save myself, I wouldn’t even try. I told you I was selfish, here’s the proof. Please, just -“  
  
He doesn’t even know what he wants, not really. Not from this miserable moment, teetering at the edge of the same precipice he’d stared down less than five hours ago. _We never learn._  
  
Carl leans back, and Pete can feel him staring, considering, but he’s so tired, and raising his head to look at Carl is too much.  
  
“Alright,” Carl says, “But I’m getting a job and you need to quit yours as soon as I do. Go on the dole, steal people’s wallets - just do something that isn’t this.”  
  
Pete’s tempted to say something flippant to that - who does Carl think he is? Pete can make his own decisions, he’s an adult, he’s capable. But it’s the greatest relief in the world, Carl taking that weight from his shoulders. He feels younger and lighter than he has since before the summer.  
  
It’s not entirely a surprise when Carl tilts Pete's head up and kisses him. As far as kisses go it’s a very light, disappointing one - or it would be, if it was being given by anyone other than Carl. Pete doesn’t exactly swoon, but he catalogs the moment extensively, trying to memorize what it feels like to have Carl’s mouth on his.  
  
Carl pulls back before Pete can really consider turning it into something more, and if either of them are hard from just that brief contact, well. Pete wonders how it is that they can be so close, be all that the other has, and still be so starved for simple intimacy.  
  
Carl’s hands are still on either side of his face, his right thumb pushing ever so slightly into the darkening bruise. Pete looks into his eyes and feels settled, almost at peace.  
  
“Can we go to sleep now?” he asks, and Carl smiles, a faint little thing; a victory.  
  
And so Pete falls asleep on Christmas morning, his body curled around Carl’s so closely that they could be one misshapen person. Tomorrow brings the same old troubles, the same challenges, the same things that make him shiver and shake. But right now, in these brief, endless moments, he doesn’t mind that at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that, as they say, is that. For this particular moment in time, anyways. This has been an Experience to write, largely because of the subject material, but also because it’s the longest finished fic I’ve ever written, and I wrote most of it over a two day period (Helsinki-style). There are definitely pieces of me in here, although I tried to limit it enough that Pete and Carl are, yknow, recognizable.   
>  
> 
> **Trivia/Notes**
> 
> \- the ‘one misshapen person’ line was pretty much pulled from that German interview where Carl says they were basically two one legged men split down the middle, who strapped themselves together and eventually learned to walk. 
> 
> \- For reference as to what Pete looks like around this time, [this](http://40.media.tumblr.com/e7e1340f986e181caabe523f3ae2864b/tumblr_ngwgphn8Ng1tphiywo1_500.jpg) is basically what I pictured while writing this. He definitely has the earring. Carl looks like, well, Carl. You know what he looks like.
> 
> \- There was, at some point, a bit clearly from Carl’s perspective (reader’s choice as to whose perspective the first bit was) where Pete sort of pulls a “I love you, whether you like it or not,” and his eyes are strange and he looks very fey, and Carl is sort of alarmed and sort of entranced. Like many, many other scenes, it was scrapped. I don’t think I’ve ever written anything where I was incredibly conscious of all the ways things could go, and I wanted to explore them all. Time’s not on my side, and all that.
> 
> \- There’s sort of a complete lack of nicknames in this, aside from a few occasional ‘Carlos’s, despite the fact that they are probably most era-appropriate at this time. I did try to make this as un-AU as possible, but I honestly forgot about Bilo and Biggles, and by the time I remembered it was a little too late. I’m not sure they would’ve fit in this story anyway. 
> 
> \- Speaking of other things I wanted to explore, Banny’s quote about how Pete probably was a rent boy, and turned it into part of his ‘armoury of myth’ to deal with it is something I couldn’t quite manage to work into it, at least not as clearly as I would’ve liked. The escapism in this fic doesn’t ever really have a mythological bent.
> 
> \- This whole thing was kicked off by me listening to Common People about 15 times in a row. This is, er, definitely not the hard-hitting academic essay I want to write about the libs and class, but it’s sort of testing the waters, I suppose.
> 
> \- I originally wrote an ending that’s basically a 2000 word sex scene, with some questionable morals, and then I looked at the whole thing and realized it didn’t fit at all. I might post it as an alternate ending, because it ends a bit…not happier, really, but more conventionally happy. I want to rewrite this whole thing when I have time, to do Carl a bit more justice if nothing else.
> 
> Finally, basically everything I write is a pastiche of stella_maris83’s fic [Wondering](http://albion-fic.livejournal.com/669848.html), which is approximately a thousand times better than this, and considerably more inappropriate. If you’re looking for a good fic about Pete and Carl being incredibly obsessed with each other and also the Romantic life, you should go read that.


End file.
